"Ah, mademoiselle," cried La Bougival, returning from the first
session in despair, "I shall not go again. Monsieur Bongrand is right,
you could never bear the sight. Everything is ticketed. All the town
is coming and going just as in the street; the handsome furniture is
being ruined, they even stand upon it; the whole place is such a
muddle that a hen couldn't find her chicks. You'd think there had been
a fire. Lots of things are in the courtyard; the closets are all open,
and nothing in them. Oh! the poor dear man, it's well he died, the
sight would have killed him."
Bongrand, who bought for Ursula certain articles which her uncle
cherished, and which were suitable for her little house, did not
appear at the sale of the library. Shrewder than the heirs, whose
cupidity might have run up the price of the books had they known he
was buying them for Ursula, he commissioned a dealer in old books
living in Melun to buy them for him. As a result of the heir's anxiety
the whole library was sold book by book. Three thousand volumes were
examined, one by one, held by the two sides of the binding and shaken
so that loose papers would infallibly fall out.
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